The “Secret Meeting” That Ended the Government Shutdown

Secret gov’t reopening meeting

China's Nvidia chip loophole

Rise of “Based Capitalism”

A centrist bloc of Sens. Shaheen, Hassan, Cortez Masto, Kaine, and King met privately with Majority Leader John Thune on Oct. 29 to craft a reopening deal.

The framework funds the government through Jan. 30, extends key nutrition and energy aid for a year, and promises—but doesn’t mandate—a December vote on Obamacare subsidies.

Schumer, sidelined from the talks, misread the moment, opposing the deal and isolating himself from his own moderates.

Eight Democrats and King joined Republicans in a 60–40 cloture vote on Nov. 9, breaking the stalemate despite backlash from the party’s left flank.

Trump signed the bill on Nov. 12, ending a weeks-long shutdown.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: The White House affirmed Trump's commitment to distributing $2,000 tariff-dividend payments to eligible Americans. (TCS)

The White House said that October economic indicators—including jobs and inflation metrics—may never see the light of day due to the government shutdown. (CNBC)

The U.S. Mint struck the final five one-cent coins, ending 232 years of penny production. (ABC)

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic announced he will depart when his term expires on February 28, 2026. (UT)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: D-Wave Quantum is positioned as the next AI giant thanks to its pioneering quantum annealing technology tailored for optimization challenges in AI inference, according to Motley Fool. (MF)

Bank of America Securities unveiled 16 non-tech stock recommendations for investors weary of the AI frenzy like Constellation Brands and JPMorgan Chase, poised to capitalize on resilient earnings growth. (MW)

Simply Wall St highlighted Samsung Heavy Industries, Camurus, and Shengda Resources as value picks, trading 29.4%, 39.2%, and 48.4% below fair value, respectively. (SWT)

Morningstar identified 10 undervalued REITs as top buys, including high-yield standouts like Americold Logistics at 0.43 times fair value and Park Hotels & Resorts at 0.51. (MS)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: New York and New Jersey hemorrhaged nearly $690 billion in cumulative resident income from 2013 to 2022 as high earners fled to low-tax havens like Florida. (FBN)

The Dow Jones soared to a record close above 48,000 for the first time at 48,254.82, its 17th peak of 2025. (CNBC)

Starbucks baristas affiliated with Starbucks Workers United will stage open-ended strikes at over 65 U.S. cafes across 40 cities on Red Cup Day. (BBG)

ISS and Glass Lewis face DOJ and FTC antitrust probes over restrictive NDAs that allegedly entrench their proxy-advisory duopoly. (WSJ)

Toyota launched production at its $13.9 billion, 1,850-acre battery plant in Liberty, North Carolina, its first outside Japan. (FBN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: A House report accuses China of decades-long manipulation of global critical minerals prices through its processing dominance, inflicting American job losses and national security threats. (RTS)

UBS forecasts a five-year "boom cycle" in global energy storage, with demand surging 40% year-on-year in 2026, propelled by voracious U.S. AI data-center power needs. (RTS)

The International Energy Agency projects that under a current policies scenario, global oil demand could climb 13% to 113 million barrels per day by 2050. (INV)

The market capitalization of tokenized gold has surged to a record $3.6 billion, up 50-fold from 2021 levels. (HCN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: SEC Chair Paul Atkins introduced a "token taxonomy" framework, classifying tokens via the Howey Test while allowing maturing networks to shed securities status through decentralized evolution. (TB)

Polymarket quietly relaunched its U.S. prediction-market trading platform in beta mode for select users. (BBG)

Coinbase will reincorporate from Delaware to Texas, decrying the former's "unpredictable" courts. (CT)
Canary Capital filed an S-1 registration with the SEC to launch the first memecoin ETF tracking MOG Coin. (CN)

Which platforms are delivering the highest ROI in 2025

Content formats driving the most engagement across industries

How AI is transforming social content creation and analytics

Tactical recommendations you can implement immediately

Nvidia sold 32 racks of its advanced Blackwell GB200 chips—totaling about 2,300 units—to Silicon Valley-based Aivres Systems, a partner whose parent company, Inspur, is on a U.S. trade blacklist for military supercomputing ties.

Aivres then negotiated a mid-2024 deal with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, an Indonesian telecom joint venture, which purchased the servers for roughly $100 million to bolster its cloud-computing arm.

Indosat secured the purchase only after lining up a client: Shanghai-based INF Tech, an AI startup founded by MIT-trained professor Qi Yuan and backed by Alibaba, which will rent the computing power remotely for financial and drug-discovery models.

INF sends data out of China for processing in Jakarta, then retrieves the trained AI models, echoing similar data-ferrying schemes in Malaysia and Australia that skirt physical chip imports.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Breaking Rust, an AI-generated country artist, has claimed the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart with “Walk My Walk.” (NW)

World Labs, the AI venture co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, unveiled Marble as its inaugural commercial product, a generative world model enabling users to craft persistent, editable 3D environments from diverse inputs. (X)

OpenAI debuted GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking models as refinements to its flagship AI lineup, infusing the former with a warmer, more conversational tone and enhanced instruction-following. (OAI)

Anthropic unveiled a $50 billion U.S. AI infrastructure push, kicking off with custom data centers in Texas and New York via a partnership with GPU cloud provider Fluidstack. (CNBC)

Microsoft showcased a massive AI "super factory" in Atlanta as part of its Fairwater network, equipped with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs and high-speed interconnections to other sites. (WSJ)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Waymo debuted the first U.S. driverless robotaxi service on freeways in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. (BBG)

Anthropic's Claude AI enabled a Unitree Go2 robot dog to fetch objects via code generation, accelerating physical tasks and advancing embodied AI in robotics. (WIR)

Scientists created tiny gold robots in gel that use laser vibrations to turn stem cells into bone cells in just three days, opening the door to faster, automated healing for bones and tissues. (AZO)

Unitree Robotics unveiled the G1-D, its inaugural wheeled humanoid robot to accelerate embodied AI development for labs and industrial applications. (PD)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Leaked photos suggest China’s forthcoming aircraft carrier will pioneer nuclear propulsion, featuring a reactor containment structure akin to U.S. supercarrier designs that promises unlimited range. (TWZ)

Anduril and EDGE unveiled the Omen, a hybrid-electric VTOL drone that sits upright, carries 3-5x more payload, flies 3-4x farther, and uses AI to team with other drones for sea patrol, supply runs, and defense. (AGN)

Macron unveiled an additional €4.2 billion ($4.9 billion) in military space funding through 2030, emphasizing that "the war of tomorrow will begin in space." (DP)

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is poised for its second flight today, launching NASA's cost-capped EscaPADE mission. (SP)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal's Parallel Web Systems, which builds AI agent web-search tools, raised a $100 million Series A co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures at a $740 million valuation. (NC)

GC AI, a startup equipping corporate legal teams with AI tools for routine tasks, secured a $60 million Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone at a $555 million valuation. (RTS)

Tavus, the enterprise AI startup specializing in recruitment and training agents, raised a $40 million Series B round led by CRV. (AX)

Attentive.ai, developer of the AI-powered Beam platform for automating construction workflows, secured a $30.5 million Series B funding round led by Insight Partners. (PUL)

Foxglove, developer of an open-source data visualization and observability platform for robotics teams, secured a $40 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners. (RR)

Target, once a prominent promoter of progressive merchandising, removed DEI-focused displays and commitments by early 2025 following boycott threats from civil rights organizations.

Major retailers and manufacturers including Ford, Walmart and McDonald’s have similarly retreated from public diversity pledges and sustainability goals.

Steak ’n Shake switched to beef tallow for frying and marketed the change with a red cap reading “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again,” aligning with the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Bud Light, still recovering from a 2023 sales collapse, featured comedian Shane Gillis—previously dismissed from NBC for controversial remarks—in new advertising.

American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign, playing on “jeans” and “genes,” triggered liberal criticism but drove a 38% stock gain as product sold out.

Black Rifle Coffee built a $100 million-plus business by contrasting itself with Starbucks, pledging veteran hiring and adopting pro-military branding.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Activists worldwide are harnessing decentralized networks like Discord and peer-to-peer protocols to orchestrate protests and evade government censorship, as seen in Nepal's student uprisings. (NW)

Undercover footage captured North Carolina A&T administrators admitting to rebranding DEI initiatives, swapping terms like “diversity” for “competency,” to sidestep a UNC system ban on such programs. (FOX)

The Federalist Society is intensifying its campus activism in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, vowing to expand free-speech events and conservative debates. (NR)